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Tailor   Listen
verb
Tailor  v. i.  (past & past part. tailored; pres. part. tailoring)  To practice making men's clothes; to follow the business of a tailor. "These tailoring artists for our lays Invent cramped rules."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tailor" Quotes from Famous Books



... the old man, stretching out his sheet. The only one there who could do so, Picot, the tailor, took it and spelled the news out to their wondering ears. It was the declaration of France ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... Italian, where the 'Signor' got his cloak, because positively she must have one like it, and he, cap in hand, was explaining to the Signorina that if she would but follow him round the corner to his military tailor's, she could be supplied on the spot. So there we all went, Miss Betty insisting. You can imagine Aunt Neta. She bought a small shipload of stuff—and then positively skipped for joy in the street outside—the amazed officer looking on. And as for her career over the roof of the Duomo—the agitation ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... carried my slops to the tailor; I sez to 'im, "None o' your lip! You tight 'em over the shoulders, an' loose 'em over the 'ip, For the set o' the tunic's 'orrid." An' 'e sez to me, "Strike me dead, But I thought you was used to the business!" an' so 'e ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... had now been burnt into a deep red copper colour. His eyes, which were small, were bloodshot, with a ferrety expression, and altogether his outward man was not attractive. His uniforms, which had hung loosely on him when he left home, had been, by the skill of the tailor, let out and out to meet the demands of his increasing corpulency; but no art or skill could do more for them; and as he was unwilling to procure others till those were worn out, he looked, when walking the quarter-deck, very much as if he had on a ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... camp-followers of the New York delegation familiar with the rules of certain of our public institutions, could hardly be agreeable to one who had worn the livery of his country with distinction. It was the scene of Petruchio and the tailor ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... hear it, dear excellent friend, and I hope it portends a wholesale order to your tailor and your intention to show yourself in society again freely. [With a laugh, PHILIP goes to the fireplace and stands looking into the fire.] Begin leaving your cards at once. No more sulking in your tent! [Rising ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... It will be recollected that he had purloined, amongst other articles, two letters, which were immediately sealed up, and sent back to the Palace. The prisoner turns out to be the son of an industrious tailor, named Jones, residing in York Street, Westminster; and, it appears, had frequently expressed his intention to enter the Palace, under any circumstances. He had often stated that he wished to see the grand staircase, in order to take a sketch of it, and had often expressed his determination ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... Ronan's Games, at which the Ettrick Shepherd presided gleefully. They are still held, or were held very lately, but there will never come again such another Shepherd, or such contests with the Flying Tailor of Ettrick. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... the main village was a mile away. Here was the tavern, the grocery store and the shops of the tailor and shoemaker. Here was centered the social life of Cook's Harbor. Here, unfortunately, the steps of John Trafton too often tended, for he always brought up at the tavern and seldom came home with a ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated him! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him, especially at some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who worked part of his time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he despised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably. Though, indeed, he looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at that flaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his forehead ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... so was Homer, and heaps more. But Shakespeare and the rest have to walk behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by the name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor named Sakka, from Afghanistan. Jeremiah, and Billings and Buddha walk together, side by side, right behind a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; next come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other worlds; ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain

... on the trail of a lion!" harshly replied the young man. "He who aroused so many hopes is, after all, nothing more than an impostor—Leon Maria Hervagault, the son of a tailor at St. Leu. The true dauphin, the son of Louis XVI., really died a natural death, after he had served a three years' apprenticeship as shoemaker under Master Simho; and in order that a later generation might not be able to secure ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... 2 the tailor's tools—shears, goose, and bodkin—are clear enough, and I was told that the figures on the stone in the lower left-hand corner (No. 3) are locally recognized as the shuttle and some other requisite ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... answer your orders; your tailor could not be more punctual. I am just now in a high fit of poetising, provided that the strait-jacket of criticism don't cure me. If you can, in a post or two, administer a little of the intoxicating potion of your applause, it will raise ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... her away in a flaming car; Then her knight, the brave Sir FRANCIS, Upon his noble steed advances, All his armour off he LEAVES, Preserves alone his polished greaves, His defence is a buff JACKET, Nor sword nor axe nor lance can crack it, It was made at HARROGATE, By a tailor whose shop had a narrow gate; The elves attack with spears of BARLEY, But he drives them off, oh! rarely, Then they shoot him with an ARROW, From bow-strings greased with ear-wigs' marrow, The feathers, moth-wings downy VELVET, The bow-strings, of the spider's net: Thousands ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... laughed Bones bitterly. "A fop, dear old Ham! A tailor's dummy! A jolly old clothes-horse—that's what he was. I simply loathe these people who leap around the City for a funeral. It's not right, dear old thing. It's not manly, dear old sport. What the devil did her father have a ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... in this city. People gave him a quick passing glance, knowing him at once for a Westerner. Feeling a trifle embarrassed under their glances, he reflected upon the advisability of buying new and more appropriate garb. A tailor was requisitioned and, finding his client to be indifferent in the matter of costs, fixed him up with a ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... arrived with a little flourish. Their trap, which she drove herself and which was perhaps a little too English to be useful or appropriate on a Californian road, the straight, tailor lines of her suit—all displayed that kind of quiet, refined ostentation which, very possibly, shrieks as loud to God as the diamond rings on a soiled finger. Mrs. Tiffany, who had met the Morses on the lawn, tripped clear across the rose-border to meet the Goodyears; did it ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... Ham. "Oh, you mean ready-made goods! Of course you can't. He'll have to be measured by a tailor, and have his new suit built ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... opposed to the look of nobility, which is the especial attribute of Reynolds's pictures. In contemplating a Sir Joshua there will be found a propriety, an integrity about the work which effectually prevents all thought of the parts played by the tailor or the milliner at the toilet of the sitter. This is not always the case with Romney's portraits; pattern, and cut, and vogue do not fail to assert themselves. In colour Romney is very unequal; in his own day it was notoriously inferior to Reynolds's, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... had its inconveniences; for sometimes an obstinate tailor or bootmaker would make a row for his money, and then we'd be obliged to get up a little quarrel between the drawer and the acceptor of the bill; they couldn't speak for some days, and a mutual friend to both would tell the creditor that the slightest imprudence on his part ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... very simple, without stiffening or linings. All are dressed after the same style, and innovations due to curiosity are not allowed. As the country is so hot, they dress very loosely, a fact which makes the cutting out very easy. Each one is the tailor of his own garments. This is the reason why the Indians are so lacking in the communal idea, and are so hostile to assembling and uniting in villages; for since their misery and laziness make them ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... hinder other people from having carriages," said Miss Lansing. "There's Mr. Mason, next door to Miss Cardigan,—his father was a tailor; and the Steppes, two doors off, do you know what they were? They were millers, a little way out of town; nothing else; had a mill and ground flour. They made a fortune I suppose, and now here they are in the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the brisk and confident walk that she had cultivated along the pavements of the shopping district, and she was dressed precisely as if about to enter upon one of her frequent excursions in that quarter on some crisp, late-autumn afternoon. She wore a very trig and jaunty tailor-made suit and a stunning little garnet-velvet toque. She tripped ahead in a solid but elegant pair of walking-shoes and was drawing on a tan glove with mannish stitchings over the back. The Boutet de Monvel girls, the contemporaries ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... which encrusted the lawyer's professional stamping ground did not extend to his person. Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. Horace Hignett, considered ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... an inspiration. I turned down the inside pocket of my coat; and there, stitched into it, was the label of my tailor's with my name written on it. I had often wondered why tailors did this; obviously they know ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... that"—holding out a yellow envelop—"is an advertisement for beef extract which no brain-worker should be without; and that"—holding out a white envelop—"is the worst of all, because it looks like a legitimate letter, and it's nothing but a 'Dear Madam' thing, telling me my tailor has moved from Twenty-second to Forty-third Street, and hopes I'll continue to favor ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... French territory. According to the Figaro, an Alsatian doctor, who came to France on the outbreak of hostilities, had been ordered to join the German army at Verdun on the third day of mobilization. A German tailor, living in Paris, had instructions to join at Rheims ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... being all spruced up. The painters have got to work at the old Baptist church; it is to be repaired inside and out—quite time, too, for it looks as if it had been exposed to the weather ever since the Flood! Mitchell's tailor shop has two new figures in the window, and, judging by the styles displayed, the latest style of coat is much cut away and would suit you exactly. But if you want to dress in the very latest style, you must also have a gorgeous plaid necktie. Shall ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... declining to give them the slightest satisfaction as to the interior management of the prosperous community over which he reigned a sovereign prince. The initiated maintained that this important personage had formerly been a tailor in Germany. He was at once the spiritual and secular head of the community: he solemnized marriages (much against his will, for, according to the rules of the society, he was obliged to provide a house for every newly-married ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... the inquest, in deep mourning, wearing a smartly-cut tailor-made dress trimmed with astrachan and a neat toque, her pale countenance covered with a thick ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... those very short coat-tails, that curved opening of the waistcoat, or those trouser-pockets. The paper turned-down collar, and the black necktie (of which only one square inch was ever visible), and the paper cuffs, which finished the tailor-made portion of Mr. Ollerenshaw, still linger in sporadic profusion. His low, flat-topped hat was faintly green, as though a delicate fungoid growth were just budding on its black. His small feet were cloistered in small, thick boots of glittering brilliance. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... together: a laughing song in the glad sunshine, summoning from afar the people who came from every side, clad in their best. The boys, in their new red-brown, fustian breeches, standing stiff with the tailor's crease in them, and their thick, wide jackets and shiny hats, held father's hand or skipped round Horieneke, whom they could not admire enough. In the village square they hid themselves and went to the booth to see how they could ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... handed it to me in its mellowed age, to be bequeathed to one of my many protegees. It was brown in colour—I detest brown, and it cordially detests me in return— and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza's back, while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... she may well fancy you have come back from the other world while you wear that antique suit," said Hyacinth. "I hope your first business to-morrow will be to replenish your wardrobe by the assistance of Lord Rochester's tailor. He is a German, and has the best cut for a justau-corps in all the West End. Fareham is shabby enough to make a wife ashamed of him; but his clothes are only too plain for his condition. Your Spanish cloak ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and strong. He knew! It couldn't come to his father or Donkov, the tailor, or Poborino, the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan's dream was one that called ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... have struggled through a jungle for seven hours in order to reach your betrothed; and that you are now facing death by torture? I hardly think that you should look as if you had just stepped out of the tailor's—" ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... processions come marching along with thundering tread, that they will believe your conversion sincere and lasting; the cloak is not long enough to conceal your feet, and Union men will recognize the same Wilbur F. Story, and none will be so obtuse as not to discover under any disguise Bottom, the tailor. In the position of that Copperhead print, the state of mind of the Times man reminds us of an instance of what may be called poor consolation, A soldier of a division, after the command had run two days ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... verandah next door, and two into our little garden. Unhappily, the last killed one of our few remaining fowls—shivered it into air so that nothing but a little cloud of feathers was seen again. In the middle of the afternoon old "Puffing Billy" again opened fire with energy. I was at the tailor's on the main street, and the shells were falling just round his shop. "Thirty-eight, thirty-four," said the little Scot measuring. "There's the Dutch church gone. Forty-two, sixteen. There's the bank. Just hold the tape, mon, while ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... serve at sea for a shallop, Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson? So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't, What with our Venerers, Prickers and Verderers, 250 Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers, And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... been a reproach to his loosely-swung life and person, to his careless, almost slovenly but well-brushed, cleanly, and polished ease—not like his wife, as though he had been poured out of a mould and set up to dry. He was not tailor-made, and she had ever been so exact that it was as though she had been crystallised, clothes and all—a perfect crystal, yet a crystal. It was this very perfection, so charming to see, but in a sense so inhuman, which had ever dismayed him. "What should I be doing in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Quakers. Apart from his constant use of certain phrases peculiar to the Friends Woolman's English is also remarkably graceful and pure, the transparent medium of a soul absolutely sincere, and tender and humble in its sincerity. When not working at his trade as a tailor Woolman spent his time in visiting and ministering to the monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings of Friends, traveling on horseback to their scattered communities in the backwoods of Virginia and North ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... seems, would not suffice our cousin John's notions. He is pleased to think Peter may require skilled medical attendance; and, since he wrote he was in rags, a new outfit. These, it seems, can only be obtained in the Metropolis nowadays. My brother's tailor still lives in Exeter; and with all his faults—and nobody can dislike him more than I do—I have never heard it denied that Dr. ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... bought that hat he is wearing. Then he walked some distance, dodging the main thoroughfares and keeping to the back streets in a way that made following difficult, till he came to a little tailor's shop. There he entered and came out in a quarter of an hour with his coat mended. This was in a street in Westminster. Presently he worked his way up to Tothill Street, and there he plunged into a barber's shop. I took a cautious peep at the window, saw two or three other ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... this part of the Hinkle theory had failed, and then Miss Milray devolved upon the belief that he had run his tailor's bill or his shoemaker's. "They are delightful, those Russians, but they're born insolvent. I don't believe he's drowned himself. How," she broke off to ask, in a burlesque whisper, "is-the-old-tabby?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in a rolled-gold case of a sort manufactured by wholesale, a briquet, a common key that might fit any hotel door, a broken paper of Regie cigarettes, an automatic pistol, a few francs in silver—nothing whatever that would serve as a mark of identification; for though the grey clothing was tailor-made, the maker's labels had been ripped out of its pockets, while the man's linen and underwear alike lacked even ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... before dawn, the fire had burnt low and I was dreaming of an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my last new trousers when a faint sound of moving shingle caught my quick seaman ear, and before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's weight was on me—a heavy, strong man who bore me down with irresistible force. I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... so far as women are concerned. There is the masculine trend, which is usually called feminism. Women tend to take up the work formerly exclusively belonging to men; they tend to dress more like men, with flat shoes, collars and ties, and tailor-made clothes. They take up the vices of men,—smoking, drinking,—are building up a club life, live in bachelor apartments, call each other by their ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... if its former owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along the main road to the village. For the rest, all things go on as usual; the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and bushings,—toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels, courtship, and marriage,—all which make up the daily life of a country ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... you!" said the boy, accompanying his words with a gesture. "Are you a shoemaker? or a tailor? Say?" ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... to privates, to conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... played the same game in a tailor-shop for five cents' worth of rags. Then I went to a hardware store on the Square and got credit for about ten cents' worth of brickdust and paste. I took Tim by the arm and led him across the west side of Chatham Square. There used to be a big drygoods store on the east side of the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... are allowed a hundred! With us any good mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but not the others—they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving times they get more—yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen milrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within the week. 'Rah for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was to invite Wulf to dine with him, to show him the waistcoat and prove beyond doubt that it had been made by a tailor of Glotzbourg. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre

... were wholly different from that. It was chiefly because of their illegitimacy, and also because they were not sufficiently refined, and because their occupations were of an inferior kind, such as mechanical trades, small shop keeping, &c. Said he, "You would not wish to ask your tailor, or your shoemaker, to dine with you?" However, we were too unsophisticated to coincide in his Excellency's notions of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... every one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the Serbian national costume who asserted that, with the exception of the tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire. One ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... for their cash, dunned the Dey incessantly, through the agency of their consul. Unaccustomed to the eagerness of French importunity, the Dey, on one unlucky occasion, made a gesture of impatience with his fan, as a man might do with his riding-whip, if his tailor became too pressing for the settlement of his account. It proved an expensive gesture, however; for within a few weeks it brought 10,000 French soldiers to the shores of the Dey, and cost him his entire realm. The bulk of the Mauresque and ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... and made a bold plunge into the unknown world of London, where she had friends, upon whose help she relied. Her friends happened to be in Wales, and she had some troubles to go through before she found a home in the house of a sister, who had married a poor tailor. About two months after she had left Standingfield she married, in London, Mr. Inchbald, an actor, who had paid his addresses to her when she was at home, and who was also a Roman Catholic. On the evening of the wedding day the bride, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... productions, into the figures of pure geometry! Hither, into this out-of-doors drawing-room, at the fashionable hour of four P.M., are poured out, from the embouchures of all the hotels, all the inhabitants of them; all the tailor's gentlemen of the Boulevard des Italiens, and all the modisterie ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... affecting her invalid and Mrs. Adister must be dismissed. Wayland was growling; he had to be held by the collar. He spied an objectionable animal. A jerky monkey was attached to the organ; and his coat was red, his kepi was blue; his tailor had rigged him as a military gentleman. Jane called to the farm-wife. Philip assured her he was not annoyed. Jane observed him listening, and by degrees she distinguished a maundering of the Italian song she had one day sung to Patrick in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this occasion. And she had succeeded. And this summer morning saw Ishmael arrayed, for the first time in his life, in a neat, well-fitting dress suit of light gray cassimere, made by the Baymouth tailor. Hannah was proud of her nephew, and Ishmael was pleased with himself. He was indeed a handsome youth, as he stood smiling there for the inspection of his aunt. Every vestige of ill health had left him, but left him with a delicacy, refinement, and elegance in his person, manners, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... jail and court-house had been built, he became, half without his willing it, a newspaper man. He learned in time to relish the humorous intimacy of the life about him; and when it was decided that he was no fool—there were doubts, growing out of his Eastern accent and the work of his New York tailor, at first—he found himself the object of a pleasing popularity. In due time he bought his brother out; he became very fond of newspaper life, its constant excitements and its endless variety; and six weeks before he sold his paper he would have scoffed ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... venom. For when you shall clasp up these two books, never to be opened again, when by letting fall that anchor which can never more be weighed up, your mortal navigation ends. Then there's no playing at spurn-point with thunderbolts. A vintner then for unconscionable reckoning or a tailor for unmeasurable items shall not answer in half that fear ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... is chosen for the frog, and sits in the center on the floor with his feet crossed in tailor fashion. Where there are more than twenty players, it is well to have at least two such frogs. The other players stand in a circle around the frog, repeating, "Frog in the sea, can't catch me!" They dance forward toward the frog and back, tantalizing him and taking risks in going near ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... case with my breeches, whoever you are,' said the tailor, without looking up. 'Dick, I wonder when I shall see ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... down tailor-fashion on the ground with his companions round him, and, while they devoted themselves ravenously and silently to tea, flour-cake, salt-pork, and beans, he explained to them the details of his plan, which explanation, (if it was not the dinner), had the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... surprising that they were so well made, considering the rude instruments with which they were fashioned. Having no scissors, they were obliged to cut out their clothes with the knife; and though this was their first attempt at the trade of shoemaker or tailor, yet they contrived to cut out the articles which they required with as much precision as if they had served a regular apprenticeship to the business. The sinews of the reindeer and bears answered for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... lick them into form—that mould them into shape. The poet make the play indeed! the colourman might be as well said to make the picture, or the weaver the coat. My father and I, sir, are a couple of poetical tailors. When a play is brought us, we consider it as a tailor does his coat: we cut it, sir—we cut it; and let me tell you we have the exact measure of the town; we know how to fit their taste. The poets, between you and me, are ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... around them, a fine head with dead black hair, and a handsome beard, streaked with gray. His dress, gentleman-like but of a strange fashion, the lawyer did not recognize as the bachelor costume of Cherry Hill prepared by his own tailor. Nothing of the Endicott in face or manner, nothing tragical, the expression decorous and formal, perhaps a trifle quizzical, as this was their first meeting since ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... about among his neighbors the next day, and he got an owld kettle from one, and a saucepan from another, and he took them to the tailor, and he sewed him up a suit of tin clothes like any knight arriant, and he borrowed a pot lid, and that he was very partikler about, bekase it was his shield, and he wint to a friend o' his, a painther and glazier, and made him paint on his shield ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... every comfort, and make what are luxuries to the millions necessities to their children; when the youth is furnished clothes made by the tailor, and money to spend as he will, and special schools and the most expensive university; when he is given vacations at seashore, in mountains, on lake, or abroad, instead of at good hard work, as the sons of the people must spend their vacations; when a ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... gentleman, dressed in the style of 1840, like an old-fashioned lithograph of a beau of the time of Gavarni, "that man has been more than thirty-five years in the institution. He will not change the cut of his garments, and he is very careful to have his tailor make his clothes in the same style he dressed when he was young. He is very happy. He thinks that he is the enchanter Merlin, and he listens to Vivian, who makes appointments with him under ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... Gaylord could and could not do, were, I acknowledge, to a Northern ethical sense a trifle mystifying. A Gaylord might drink and gamble and fail to pay his debts (not his gambling debts; his tailor and his grocer); he might be the hero of many doubtful affairs with women; he might in a sudden fit of passion commit a murder—there was more than one killing in the family annals—but under no circumstances would his "honah" permit him to tell a lie. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... Richmond. Dr. Martineau's height wanted at least three inches of Sir Richmond's five feet eleven; he was humanly plump, his face was round and pink and cheerfully wistful, a little suggestive of the full moon, of what the full moon might be if it could get fresh air and exercise. Either his tailor had made his trousers too short or he had braced them too high so that he seemed to have grown out of them quite recently. Sir Richmond had been dreading an encounter with some dominating and mesmeric personality; this amiable presence dispelled his ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... newest one you've got?" asked the millionnaire, in the same tone he would have used to his tailor, as he pointed to a picture of a strip of land between sea and sky—one of those uncertain landscapes that a man is righteously excused ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... have lured them from their hiding places—shipwrecked creatures they seemed who had fled to a cavern on some deserted shore. They had absurdly gay cravats and sad, pallid faces, and the greenish light made them look altogether like corpses. It was long since a barber had touched their hair or a tailor their garb. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... and spacious apartments provided for him, but a groom in attendance waiting to be engaged by his honour, and a second valet, if he was inclined to hire one to wait upon Mr. Gumbo. Ere he had been many minutes in his rooms, emissaries from a London tailor and bootmaker waited him with the cards and compliments of their employers, Messrs. Regnier and Tull; the best articles in his modest wardrobe were laid out by Gumbo, and the finest linen with which his thrifty Virginian mother had provided him. Visions of the snow-surrounded home ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... went to school in the village, about a mile away. Dermot Finnigen, the schoolmaster, was also a tailor, a barber, a bit of a doctor, and a fiddler. He did very well at all his professions, but ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... pipe, and shook it at the tailor with a wicked grin that showed all his sharp little teeth. Mrs. Hoffman wanted to call a policeman and the board of health, but the thirst for vengeance suggested a more ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... moment the tailor paused. In that moment the destinies of Jaune d'Antimoine, of Rose Carthame, of the Count Siccatif de Courtray, hung in the balance. It was life or death. Jaune felt his heart beating like a trip-hammer. There was upon him a feeling of suffocation. The silence ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... have whispered in his ear a few words of sympathy and comfort. He stood on the platform firm and erect, his eyes apparently fixed on the clock opposite. "Now, gentlemen, what do you offer for Ben?" said the Frenchified salesman; "a first-rate tailor—only twenty-one years of age." 700 dollars proved to be the estimated ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... order. To my great annoyance I found my landlord in a more impossible temper than ever. He seemed unable to forget my having blamed him for his treatment of the dog, and also of my servant, whom I had been obliged to protect against him when she had had a love-affair with a tailor. In spite of receiving payment and promises he remained peevish, and insisted that he would have to move into my part of the house on account of his health in the coming spring. So while I forced him, by paying ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... affectionately, said it was a present from her poor dear husband, and launched into an account of her anxieties respecting it, being delicate and liable to colds, notwithstanding the trousseau (it was a lady poodle) which the fashionable dog tailor in Regent Street ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... the tailor's shop I was accosted by a wretched creature who had seen me alight from the chaise in His Majesty's uniform, and had followed, but did not venture to introduce himself until I emerged in a less compromising ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... look like ploughboys dressed in old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great drawing-room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining, but the windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor. Althorpe has several very fine pictures by the best Italian hands, and a gallery of all one's acquaintance by Vandyke and Lely. I wonder you never saw it; it is but six miles from Northampton. Well, good night; I have writ you such ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... observations, understood by himself to have a regenerative bearing on human society. His wristbands and black gloves, his hat and nicely clipped hair, his laudable moderation in beard, and his evident discrimination in choosing his tailor, all seemed to excuse the prevalent estimate of him as a man untainted with heterodoxy, and likely to be so unencumbered with opinions that he would always be useful as an assenting and admiring listener. Men of science seeing him ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... during it Allan made David's position perfectly clear to him. "Dr. Balmuto has taken for himself the pleasure of buying your first books, David," he said; "you must let me select your first scholastic wardrobe; or rather we will go together to my tailor, for he will know exactly what is necessary for you. The square cap of your college, and its scarlet gown, we shall ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... think themselves miserable in coarse clothes, or a patched coat, and yet contentedly suffer their minds to appear abroad in a piebald livery of coarse patches and borrowed shreds, such as it has pleased chance, or their country tailor (I mean the common opinion of those they have conversed with) to clothe them in. I will not here mention how unreasonable this is for men that ever think of a future state, and their concernment in it, which no rational man can avoid to do sometimes: nor shall I take notice what a shame ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... man whom I believed to be Jack Talbot—and who certainly resembled him in face and figure—attired in Talbot's clothes, and wearing a coat which I had noted so particularly as to be able to describe it to my tailor when ordering a similar one. Add to that the appearance of an attractive lady, young and unknown, and you have my soul laid bare to ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... a tailor, and each ordered a new suit of clothes; they delivered their letters of recommendation, and went to the banker to whom they were addressed ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... a little tailor business, and that's all," Ruth said, gravely. "I—I sha'n't tell Mr. Howbridge ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... two sequins from the ebony chest. The price the extortionate tailor charges, is some thirty piastres. Bring back the change ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... feet were black and sunburnt; and by my long journey, my boots were quite worn out, so that I was forced to walk barefooted; and my clothes were all in rags. I entered the town to inform myself where I was, and addressed myself to a tailor that was at work in his shop. He made me sit down by him, and asked me who I was, from whence I came, and what had brought me thither. I did not conceal anything that had befallen me, nor made I any scruple to reveal to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... the colonies four centuries later, cloth that came from the weaving was not comely to wear till it was fulled under foot or in fulling-stocks, washed well in water, scratched and dressed with teazels, dyed and tented, and put in the tailor's hands. Nor did the roll of centuries bring a change in the manner of proceeding. If grease had been put on the wool when it was carded, or sizing in the warp for the weaving, it was washed out by good rinsing from the woven cloth. This ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... the carpenter, of whom I spoke before, and Mrs. Stahl became the matron of the school when we moved to College Hill, and had these ten Chinese children as well as the orphans to care for. We were very busy sewing for them, with a Chinese tailor to help. Blue jackets and trousers for week-days, and black trousers and white jackets for Sundays, had to be made at once. The girls wore trousers as well as the boys, only wider, and their jackets ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... Frisby, 'you don't like them pills. I've got some bills of the "Cropper Automobile" and a few of "Bagley, the Gents' Tailor"—' ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... from Russell Square to the Green Park, to catch the chance of a glimpse of our lordship. You find out from our lordship's footman that our lordship wears a particular collar to his coat, and you will move heaven and earth to find out our lordship's tailor. When you apply to him to make a coat in our lordship's style, our tailor, who sees at a glance that you are not fit to be his customer, will tell you with an air, that he "declines ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... student joke against the serjeants. "Why is a serjeant's speech like a tailor's goose?"—"Because ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... fell at this information. "Ah, worthy sir," said he, "there is no washing the black-a-moor white; Old Noll will continue Old Noll, dress him up how you will. There's no putting a King's heart into a scoundrel's body; and a tailor never yet made more than the clothes of a gentleman. I say, the man that can't forgive a brave young gentleman, never ought to wear the crown of England. You had half persuaded me to forget the true King beyond sea, and to think, as this ruler would do ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... "The Rail-Splitter at Work Repairing the Union," would indicate, the President is using the Vice-Presidential candidate on the Republican National ticket (Andrew Johnson) as an aid in the work. Johnson was, in early life, a tailor, and he is pictured as busily engaged in sewing up the rents made in the map of the Union ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... instance, as soon as I recovered from the shock. Also—I found on inquiring of your tailor that you ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... evasion of the police. But a man may understand ragging and yet be very far from understanding religious ragging. This seeming host of theirs might comprehend a quarrel of husband and lover or a difficulty at cards or even escape from a pursuing tailor; but it still remained doubtful whether he would feel the earth fail under him in that earthquake instant when the Virgin is compared to a goddess of Mesopotamia. Even MacIan, therefore (whose tact was far from being his strong point), felt the necessity for some compromise in ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... that I had not time to examine the sunshine, or see whether it might not be some gilt Birmingham counterfeit; for you know, men of Birmingham, that you can counterfeit—such is your cleverness—all things in heaven and earth, from Jove's thunderbolts down to a tailor's bodkin. Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... have so many; and suppose you never had any more made, and were to live a hundred years, which wouldn't astonish me, you could still wear a new dress the day of your death, without being obliged to see the nose of a single tailor from now till then." Porthos shook ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... general contour of her body—her small waist, her broad shoulders and rounding chest, her well-formed head, and the artistic arrangement of her abundant hair. There was something, too, in the tasteful simplicity of her gray tailor-made gown that reminded Westerfelt of the dress of young ladies he had seen on short visits to the larger towns in ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... the old man concluded, "let me warn you to set your face sternly against these modern innovations, and to return to the plainer, and yet more beautiful habiliments of your sires. Let the sturdy oak be your tailor; when you need a vernal gown, seek the spreading chestnut tree and from its upper branches pluck the clothing that you need, and when drear winter comes upon the scene hie you to the mountain top, and from the rich stock of Hemlock, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... for on any hypothesis. Our first answer to it is that it seems to be sufficiently refuted by the experiences of common life. We have abundant evidence that men's minds do count for something. I conclude that I want a coat, and I order one of my tailor; he believes that I will pay for it, he wants the money, and he makes the coat; his man desires to earn his wages and he delivers it. If I had not wanted the coat, if the tailor had not wanted my money, if the ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... lubberly tailor to a good smart sailor is then related with infinite variations, but always with the same gusto. Ranzo is only really popular afloat. But Blow the man down is a ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... was made, in spite of these gloomy predictions, and it was found, as well it might be, that a small capital, if prudently managed, is as independent of the attacks of a rival, in banking, as in any other business. And why should there be a difference? A tailor or shoemaker who employs but two or three journeymen, may do as safe, though not so profitable a business, as he who employs twenty or thirty—in the same way as a small vessel may navigate the ocean as safely as a large one, and may be even less likely to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... black eyes following us quite despairingly from behind the palms at the other end of the room. Cressida observed as we went out that the young man was probably having a hard struggle. "He never got those clothes here, surely. They were probably made by a country tailor in some little town in Austria. He seemed wild enough to grab at anything, and was trying to make himself heard above the dishes, poor fellow. There are so many like him. I wish I could help them all! I didn't quite have the courage to send him money. His smile, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... grouped or classified. Individuality simply cannot fit into a pigeon-hole, and it is all the further from fitting if the pigeon-hole is shaped according to an ethical principle. Ethics is a poor tailor to ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... be trivial and slight. They assume a ludicrous importance. No man is worthy to be reproduced as bust or statue. And if sculpture is too august to deal with what a man has received from his Maker, how much less ought it to be bothered about what he has received from his hosier and tailor! Sculpture's province is the soul. The most concrete, it is also the most spiritual of the arts. The very heaviness and stubbornness of its material, precluding it from happy dalliance with us fleeting individual creatures, fit it to cope with that which in mankind is permanent and universal. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... garb, he had consulted Breakspeare as to the tailor it behooved him to patronise. Unfortunately the only good tailor at Hollingford was a Conservative, who prided himself on having clad the late M. P. for many years. Lashmar of necessity applied to an inferior artist, but in this man, who was ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... reminds us of lands distant and different from our own. The English belles seek after French laces; the French beauty enumerates English laces among her rarities; and the French dandy piques himself upon an English tailor. We Americans are great travelers, and few people travel, I fancy, with more real enjoyment than we; our domestic establishments, as compared with those of the Old World, are less cumbrous and stately, and so our money is commonly in hand as pocket-money, to ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... is a satiric character sketch where before was romance; for broad comedy in the older and larger sense it has no peer among modern novels. The purpose is plain: to show the evolution of a young middle-class Englishman, a tailor's son, through worldly experience with polite society into true democracy. After the disillusionment of "high life," after much yeasty juvenile foolishness and false ideals, Evan comes back to his father's shop with his lesson learned: it is possible (in modern England) ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... this point, the landlord interferes ex officio to preserve order. The Lammeter family having come up, he discreetly invites Mr. Macey, the parish clerk and tailor, to favor the company with his recollections on the subject. Mr. Macey, however, "smiled pityingly in answer to the landlord's appeal, and said: 'Ay, ay; I know, I know: but I let other folks talk. I've laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... the coats, they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut, colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be put up for you—a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far the best piece of work, you may be sure your own won't be taken for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... an inspection. The coming case would make one more failure, I imagined; still, I was sorry I had remarked how she had coaxed her veil into shape; but with that wanton hair, a hat which was a department to manage in itself, a tailor-made primness of figure to superintend and the curvatures of Jim's conversation to follow, I could understand that she needed the help of all her senses to keep her pretty, light-hearted poise. I sighed to think of the trouble in store for Mrs. Jim, not in the least knowing what a remarkable ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah! here is the Duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailor-made gown. You see ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... his mind, and in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with pleasure. "Will they talk long of my departure?" came into his head; but who "they" were he did not quite know. Next came a thought that made him wince and mutter incoherently. It was the recollection of M. Cappele the tailor, and the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he still owed him, and he recalled the words in which he had begged him to wait another year, and the look of perplexity and resignation which had appeared on the tailor's face. 'Oh, my God, my God!' he repeated, wincing and trying ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... and deaf tailor in this neighbourhood who has a particular language of his own by signs, and by practice I can understand him, and make him understand me pretty well, and I am sure I could make him learn to write, and be understood by letters very soon, for he can distinguish men already by the letters ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... but the necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... mornings when she wore a faultless tailor-made of plain dark blue and carried a scarlet parasol, with its jewelled handle held in a firm little hand ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... the 'ship's draughtsman,' whose duties are somewhat analogous to those of the architect of a house, or the engineer of a railway, or the scientific cutter at a fashionable tailor's: he has to shape the materials out of which the structure is to be built up, or at least he has to shew others how it is to be done. When the ship-builder has received an order, we will say, to construct a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... an incredulous glance that took in the beautiful, soft, hand-knit sweater jacket, the white flannel skirt with its air of having been fashioned by an expensive tailor, the white buckskins and bit of white silk stocking. He knew girls, daughters of rich fathers, who did not wear ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... declare," cried the fat scout, who was not in khaki uniform like four of his companions, simply because he and George were waiting until the town tailor, father to Jasper Merriweather, one of the members of the troop, could complete their suits—"then, if a baby could understand what our pathfinder has left for us, perhaps now there might be ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... the head of 'Ici un parle Francais,' prints, 'Merchant and tailor. Cloths (clothes?) Reddy maid, Mercery Roman; ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various



Words linked to "Tailor" :   fitter, seamster, garment worker, run up, forge, tailor-make, fashion, tailor's tack, design, adapt, tailor's chalk, orient, tailor-made, sartor, sew, accommodate, tailoring



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